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By purporting to catch Rep. Paul Ryan in a self-made rhetorical trap in his acceptance speech in Tampa, the Obama campaign is trying to create some damning fine print that simply doesn't apply.

The GOP vice presidential candidate specifically blamed President Obama for not coming through on what seemed like a campaign promise in 2008 to keep the General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wis., open, or to get it running again. And more generally, Ryan was knocking Obama for failing to lead an often-promised revival by the U.S. economy.

Does anyone believe that we've heard the last about the Janesville plant in this campaign? With Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes clearly in play after Ryan's ascension to the Republican ticket, the idle GM plant as a symbol of economic problems is likely to be referred to again and again over the next two months.

Actually, it's Ryan's parsers who want the American people to swallow something far-fetched. They would like voters somehow to believe that, in his remarks in accepting the vice-presidential nomination, Ryan was accusing Obama of having allowed the closing of the plant as part of the taxpayer bailout of General Motors early in his presidency.

But Ryan didn't say anything of the kind. And an examination of the facts, while confirming that Ryan may have used a bit of rhetorical license, shows no fundamental mistake in the point he was making.

Here's what happened to the plant: One of GM's oldest assembly plants, constructed in 1919, the Janesville operation had been on the chopping block for years. It assembled some of GM's largest and most profitable models: Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, and GMC Yukon and Yukon XL.

But those hulking, truck-based SUVs were slowly being marginalized by GM's new generation of smaller, "crossover" utility vehicles such as the GMC Acadia and Chevy Traverse. The spiking of gasoline prices at more than $4 a gallon in 2008 was gutting already-dwindling demand for these nameplates. And besides, GM also produced them at its plant in Arlington, Texas -- a facility that is almost a half-century newer than the Janesville plant was.

So GM announced in October, 2008, as the presidential race was climaxing, that it would soon idle the plant and place it on "standby." GM stopped most output at the plant by the end of the year, after the election but before Obama was sworn in as president. President George W. Bush initiated the GM bailout, with Obama's assent, by the end of December.

Here's what Obama said in 2008: While a candidate, in February, 2008, Obama delivered a speech at the plant in which he promised to fight to keep it open. "I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years," he said at the time.

And in October, after the plant's fate had been announced, Democratic nominee Obama noted that the plant had been placed on "standby" and said that, as president, he would "retool" operations like the Janesville plant in an effort to re-start production there.

Here's what Ryan said in Tampa: He said that "when Obama talked about change" in the 2008 campaign, "many people [in Wisconsin] liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, 'I believe that if our government is there to support you ... this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008.

"Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."